The 25th Olympia Int’l Film Festival for Children & Young People (in Pyrgos, Amaliada and other Greek towns) returned with a full-blown physical edition, running with the 22nd European Meeting of Youth Audiovisual Creation “Camera Zizanio”. A week full of full-house screenings (120 in total), accompanied by workshops and activities for cinema professionals. Among them was the 5th Olympia “Creative Ideas” Pitching Lab Presentation.
In the Pitching event, Greek filmmakers presented their future short films for children, pursuing the awards set by the Greek Film Centre and the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation. The winners were Evangelos Vrohidis, with his magical-realistic road trip CHILE-CANADA and Loukia Tzortzopoulou with GOOD FRIDAY, based on a true story from WWII. Tzortzopoulou’s animated short has secured funding and is expected to start production this spring.
A bunch of ECFA members (and more) participated in the first ECFA BEAT meeting. The intention was to create an environment to talk casually about issues and concerns shared by ECFA members, moderated by Gert Hermans. The ECFA Beat at Olympia was mostly concerned with challenges in film programming but, as casual conversations go, the discussion moved over various issues, like social and political boundaries and self-censorship, films that we are proud to have selected and screened, challenges in finding the right mix for specific audiences and more. This first ECFA BEAT was an experiment – ECFA encourages other festivals to organise similar events.